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Apple Improves the Watch, Slightly

Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, talked about the Apple Watch at an event this month.Credit...Stephen Lam/Getty Images

The Apple Watch has been on sale since the spring, and like all Apple products, it has been the subject of intense speculation, criticism, fawning and doomsaying. Expect all of it to accelerate, because on Monday Apple is releasing the first major upgrade of the watch’s operating system. The new software had been scheduled for release last week, but Apple postponed the rollout at the last minute because of an unspecified bug. That bug has now been fixed.

I’ve been using the new version for almost two weeks. The watch’s hardware remains unchanged; all the upgrades will be delivered via an update to watch owners. Here is my assessment.

The watch is still probably not for you. Apple has made some small and useful improvements, but it’s unlikely that any will alter the overall reception of the device. This is still a product of limited utility for most people.

As I wrote in April, I like the Apple Watch. I still wear it daily. I use it mainly for the quick access to digital notifications — incoming texts, tweets, email and reminders about the next meeting. Also, I use it to tell the time (it is, after all, a watch). The problem, as every critic has noted, is that a variety of other devices, most obviously your smartphone, already provide this information. The watch may give you access to the flood of notifications with added speed and panache, but it does not do much that you would not be able to do otherwise, and nothing in the new software changes that.

So if you liked the watch before, you’ll like it a bit more after this upgrade. If you didn’t see the need for the device, you still won’t.

This doesn’t mean the watch is doomed. As I argued in July, it’s too early to tell if the watch will become a hit because all new major Apple product introductions tend to follow a familiar script. The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad were all criticized for being too expensive and not very useful in their earliest days; only after steady, incremental improvements over a period of years did they become entrenched in the culture. (The tech industry is still debating the success of the iPad, five years after its introduction.)

In that sense, then, it’s not a surprise that the new software isn’t revolutionary — it’s in the nature of these updates that they’re more incremental than overhauls. What’s important, though, is that Apple is figuring out what the watch is for and experimenting with some new ideas that may ultimately prove quite novel.

Some of the new features reflect Apple’s emerging understanding about how people use the watch. For instance, the company didn’t anticipate that people would want to reply to email using their watches, so the first version let you only read email. Now that’s fixed; as with texts, you can respond to email by voice dictation or with a set of canned responses.

In other features, you can begin to see the outlines of something bigger. The first watch was almost totally dependent on the phone for connectivity. The device can now connect directly to Wi-Fi networks that you have already registered with, meaning that you can use some watch apps and, depending on your carrier, possibly make phone calls even when your phone isn’t around. It’s not quite an independent device, but you can see Apple preparing for such a future.

It’s slightly faster. The original Apple Watch was criticized for being a little lethargic. The interface often took half a beat too long to respond, and sometimes the whole interface just hung up. You’d tap to open the Weather app, wait, wait, wait and then get tired and reach for your phone.

The new software makes this slightly better. Now, apps live on the watch “natively” — that is, they can store and process data using the watch’s hardware, while in the past they relied on the phone for everything. For me, this change resulted in a slight but noticeable increase in speed in the watch’s Weather and Maps apps, and it will probably appear soon in other apps, too (once they’re updated by developers). In the Weather app, tapping between different interface elements resulted in instant changes, without delay. This doesn’t sound like much, but when lots of developers update their apps, many tiny speed increases will likely add up to a more pleasant experience.

It’s much prettier. Apple is now selling a few new combinations of watch cases and bands, including gold and rose gold cases in the cheapest Sport edition, which starts at $349. The designer label Hermès is also creating its own editions of the watch; these versions include Hermès watchbands as well as a special Hermès digital watch face that matches the design of the Hermès analog watches. The overall effect is to make the watch more striking, and, in the case of the Hermès cases, so pretty it seems wrong to call it a gadget.

I wore the gold Sport watch with a new bright orange band, and at least a half-dozen people complimented me on the combination — the first time I’ve noticed any interest in my Apple Watch since its introduction.

There are some fun bells and whistles. Apple added a couple of new watch faces that show pictures from your phone each time you look at your wrist. I loved them — it’s endearing to see pictures of my children on my wrist. The Maps app now has transit directions in a few large cities; if you’re in one of them, the upgrade is handy. And you can now send multicolored sketches to other people who have watches. In the past, you were limited to one color.

Now if only you could find someone else who has one.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Apple Improves the Watch, Slightly, and Makes It Prettier. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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